Ohne Dich (Without You)
by Joani
Summary: A peek in Letty's mind and heart when she finds herself alone. Linked drabbles that follow Letty through to being found in Europe, and the aftermath.
1. Chapter 1

I started this one night, listening to Rammstein's most recent album and deeply into a bottle of wine. Then I woke up the next morning, had a cup of coffee and some Advil, and started to edit. And then re-edited a few days later. And more editing.

It's a bit of a stream-of-consciousness writing, to various tunes of Rammstein as indicated (in case you feel like having a soundtrack). More like linked-drabbles than any solid plot.

I do not own the characters named in this story.

* * *

(Roter Sand)

Letty stares at the cross and feels a pain in a way she's never felt before.

It starts in her throat and works its way painfully down, freezing her voice box, to her stomach. Last night's conversation comes back to her, and then last night's dinner roils inside her.

The sheets beneath her, once warm, are cold, dank, and unwelcoming. Without him, she has no place here.

The cross is draped haphazardly off a stack of meaningless cash. That's when she knows she's alone. The money is meant to fulfill a basic need, but in Letty's Maslow-vian hierarchy of needs, it is merely a Band-aid over a true need: to belong to her family.

He's declared that she doesn't belong anymore. That's the conclusion Letty's fragmented mind comes to. Her role has been outsourced, replaced, by a stack of Benjamin Franklins, topped like icing by a cross that she thought she knew intimately.

The floor rug gains a few new colours as her stomach empties itself.

* * *

(Amour)

What to do, where to go? For once, Letty is without direction. Dom has removed his navigational point from her internal compass, and she is lost.

Letty without bearings is an ugly, self-destructive show. She flies in any direction, without a goal. She tears the room apart for clues of Dom's destination, but she doesn't find any. For a few days, Letty drives around town, questioning anyone who has seen the dense asshole who's dumb enough to leave her.

Once her mind lands an idea, it's impossible to shake. She is a tornado on the spot. Anything in her area is subject to vengeance. Her plan is undefined, a faint idea with a tentative ghost of a climax. The deranged goal of a fevered mind.

If she can't be with Dom now, she will make it so one day, she can be.

If anyone asks, she owes him for his family taking her in.

If she asks herself, it's because she needs something to hold onto. Perhaps she needs Dom to owe her, even if he doesn't know he does. Letty needs to have something she can collect on.

So one sunny day, Letty goes to see someone else Dom owes even more, for keeping him out of jail.

Obviously, being 'killed' wasn't on the menu.

* * *

(Frühling in Paris)

When Letty awakens in a hospital, the world has gone to shit even more. First, she's lost her belief base of Family, Dom, and Self. Now she's lost things she never knew she had. Her body has betrayed her too. Even after five weeks in therapy, Letty won't think about what her body lost.

There's this beady little guy, assuring her everyone will be okay if she accepts this job he's offering. Dom will be okay.

It's a quick assignment of a year; twelve months; three hundred and sixty five days of spying on some dude in Europe. He mentions, almost as an afterthought, that everyone believes she's dead. And while Letty wants to prove them so very wrong, a niggling little thought remembers, helped along by photos of Dom with some cop's slender ex-wife, that Dom wasn't the most attentive or brilliant of boyfriends.

When he had left his cross, was he giving her his blessing? Go with God?

Letty really doesn't know and while her first reaction is screaming she should go put some asphalt tracks on this woman's face, Letty is nothing if not smart and more than a bit broken. She has lost so many things and people recently that she just wants to feel put-back-together again.

She agrees to take the job. Something, anything, to do while she figures shit out.

* * *

(Haifisch)

However, Letty will be damned before she lets the Torretos forget her.

Whenever she sees a unique postcard in wherever she's staying, Letty makes sure to send one back to her old Los Angeles address. She doesn't really know if anyone's picking them up, but from how her handler complains, the postcards must be going _somewhere_.

He never exactly says that someone is reading them, but he mentions that her field pay could be spent in more useful ways, so Letty takes his annoyance as a sign that she's doing something right.

The postcard from Berlin is of a line in the ground – where the Berlin Wall lay; now a path on the ground, surrounded by the memorial crosses for those who tried to cross it. Letty finds it particularly fitting, because she feels she'd tried to cross a line, only to get shot down. Where the line lay, in her relationship with Dom, she doesn't know; she just knows the pain of being too close, and being lost afterward.

A week after she put the square of cardboard in the post, Brian's shocked face is mirroring hers across the German tapas bar, right before she turns and runs out the door.

She is just thankful he doesn't follow her.

* * *

After that, Letty fades into the Spanish countryside. She leaves a message with her handler about needing a vacation, and vanishes.

She may not pronounce her 'c's like the people in the area, but they are pretty welcoming to any pretty lady who speaks the language. The cheap wine is great. Letty starts to think she could retire here after the job is done. The countryside is restful, and she starts to think she could be happy living in the area, with time.

One postcard from Valencia is all she sends in two months; she remembers it especially because there were a lot of oranges in the background. She didn't know there were oranges in Spain. It leads straight to her.

When they catch up to her, one day, sun-tanning on the beach, Letty supposes she shouldn't be too surprised. Playtime is over.


	2. Chapter 2

Hi again! Happy New Year to everyone! I'm sorry this is late!

This chapter starts with a request that someone made to see into Dom's head. The italics chapter is an interlude that is out of place, but it wouldn't fit _anywhere_ I tried to put it.

This has gone through a few a few catastrophes and I'm lucky it has made it to this point. It's more stream-of-consciousness stuff.

Please let me know what you think. Oh, and I don't own anything.

* * *

_The Dom Interlude:_

_Dom watches Letty sleep, and his gut twists. The stinging of his eyes could be the imminent sign of tears, blurring the moonlight across her face._

_If he were honest with himself, he would say he's leaving her so she is safe._

_But that's only the half of the truth; the other half, he doesn't like to think about._

_Letty is growing, changing, in a way he never imagined she might. The casual, along-for-the-ride girl he knew is evolving into something unknown, and he isn't sure he's strong enough to handle it. And he knows that's all he would be able to do: hold on for dear life and live to tell the tale of the ride._

_Whether it's his ego or his upbringing, Dom doesn't know. He does know that if he stays and holds on as tight as he would really like to, everything will fall apart, for them, and for her. She will no longer be his wild-ass Letty, but a simulacrum, trying to fit her larger-than-life self into the little mold he is comfortable with, and then she will hate him. Better she should hate him a little now than to hate him more later._

_He wonders that the wooden door closing behind him sounds like a wooden door, not the death knell he thought it would be._

* * *

(Ich Tut Ihr Weh)

The day of reckoning that Letty both wanted and abhorred has come.

She's sitting on her hostel bed, across from Dom. He's looking at her like she's simultaneously the answer to his prayers, and the unrepentant sinner.

Why didn't she call him, he asks.

Is she supposed to traipse in with a cop's wife on his lap, she responds, eyebrow raised. Letty realizes she is hurting and not objective, but damnit, the whole situation is so fucked up.

Dom has the grace, if that's the term, to look a bit ashamed.

So he thought she was dead. That's great, she taunts. It only took two weeks to audition her replacement?

Letty isn't just upset. It's a maelstrom of hurt, love, pride, shame, and all the words that should take place, and shouldn't, in love. Does she love him, she wonders as she watches him? 'Probably' is all she can add up to right now, with a side of being very, very angry with him. But that's fair, she decides.

* * *

(Ich Will)

So now what?

Letty declares in a moment of clarity, now you get to convince me that you love me, and that you deserve that I love you. In her own head, Letty wonders where this is coming from. She's never doubted, never thought it would be like this between them. But it feels right, and Letty is nothing if not in the moment. Dom sighs and looks at her like, she imagines, he's wondering if it'll be worth it. But as he stands up and gets her phone number, and then dips his head to kiss her like she hasn't been kissed since _the night he left_, she knows her Dom-interpretation skills are just rusty.

What does she want, she wonders later. Sitting alone in a crowded, garishly painted hostel room in Valencia, Letty gives herself a moment to ponder this. Her body, she is sure, wants Dom. It remembers every finger he caressed her with. Her heart yearns for Dom. But her mind is reserved; it wants to have Dom's head on a silver platter, while his dead tongue professes loving syllables to her.

Letty isn't sure that's possible, but it's what she wants. Vengeance and love, in that order.

Love comes in the form of Dom coming every day, asking to take her out. Vengeance comes in the form of shutting the door in Dom's face. Love then returns every time Dom does, asking her to a new occasion. Letty wonders if she's made Dom work this hard since their first date.

It's at least two weeks before Letty gives in, and she's surprised by where Dom starts to take her.

Three nights ago, it was dancing along La Rambla; they made the locals' heads turn. Two nights before, he took her to a quiet, moon-lit dinner along the Mediterranean beach. Last night, they went to a matador spectacle.

Tonight, it's to dinner and a Gaudi exhibition. She is pretty sure Dom is losing his mind.

Sipping sangria at an inexpensive Spanish tapas bar, Letty surprises herself when she boldly asks if Dom wouldn't rather visit the erotic museum just up the road.

Dom replies with a hint of colour that he didn't want to press too fast.

Letty mentally and emotionally checks in with herself and realizes that while it may be the sangria talking, she doesn't mind touring the museum.

Which turns out to not be what she expected.

Sure, it's all educational and shit, but Letty does wonder if the Gaudi display would be more, ahem, inspiring. Seeing old Victorian-era photos of porn is not really her idea of enticing.

Apparently it's up to her to fill in the lesson plan: a few more drinks at a late-night bar, and she and Dom are feeling pretty content. So she brings him back to her hostel and frankly, has her way with him.

Which in no way solves any of their problems, and creates quite a few more, but she's on her own turf, and feels at least somewhat empowered when they wake up the next morning.

* * *

At least he's still there, she thinks quietly and a bit jadedly when she cracks open one eye the next day. They're cramped on her one-person bed, but he's holding her like and honestly, Dom would be cramped anywhere. He's so big, Letty wonders if he fits into her life anymore.

Aye, there's the rub.

Does Dom, truck-jacker and love of her former life, fit in with the new Letty, superspy and pretend-international socialite?

The irony, Letty decides, is the key bitch in this sarcastic movie. Now she's the one thinking of leaving? How round-circle is that?

In the end, she decides to stay in bed a bit longer. She's craving coffee and hot eggs, and there's a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant that does both well, and any conversation with Dom won't be interrupted.


End file.
